Bitcoin Casinos With Licences

Bitcoin Casinos With Licences

If you’ve been gambling online a lot with your Bitcoin, you’ll have noticed by now that many of the gambling sites, particularly the ones that tend to offer typical casino type games (as opposed to simple Bitcoin dice sites) just as you’d expect with a full-fledged physical casino, display a licence or call themselves a licensed casino.

Ever wondered what this really meant?

What a casino with a licence implies

In terms of game play, customer support and performance, there’s really nothing that sets a licensed casino apart from unlicensed ones. However, it is important to note that for a casino operator to obtain a licence, there are several security and background checks that form part of the application.

In other words, an external party (usually appointed by the licensing authorities) is the one that has to verify details to ensure fairness and security, among other things. This implies that any Bitcoin Casino with a license has been externally verified to be fair and secure as they claim to be.

Types of licences

The type of license (or rather, from which licensing authority it comes from) can help you determine better if it’s any good. There are more than 10 online gambling licensing authorities worldwide, from the Philippines in Southeast Asia, to the UK in West Europe, to Costa Rica in South America and Nevada in North America.

The early days saw licensing jurisdictions appear in small nations like Gibraltar and Malta, due to their small economies taking advantage of extra revenues but more countries are opening up to allow online gambling.

Here are some of the licensing authorities and what their license implies:

Gibraltar Gaming Commission

Gibraltar gives out one of the oldest and most respected online gambling licenses around and its relatively low-cost ($10,000) is popular with new players looking to make an entry. Typically, only well-established operators with good financial track records and solid business models are granted licenses, ensuring the reputation of a Gibraltar license remains strong.

Government of Curacao

Netherland’s welcoming attitude towards Bitcoin is also very helpful in getting Bitcoin casinos licensed in Curacao, so you’ll notice many Bitcoin portals with this particular license that allows the operator to run a diverse range of games including binary options, P2P and lotteries.

However, this is among the simplest licence to obtain, especially after Curacao became independent from the Netherlands in 2010 and is known to independently issue licenses quickly even to completely new operators.

While this isn’t saying that a Curacao license is useless, it’s certainly one of the easier ones to get hold of.

UK Gambling Commission

The UK has a very strict approach to issuing licenses and are probably the most responsive in terms of responding to consumer complaints. Their licensing is also on the expensive side, so you can be sure that if you’re gambling at a Bitcoin casino with a UK Gambling Commission licence, you know you’re at a serious place.

Costa Rica

We decided to list Costa Rica here, although technically, the government offers licences for online gambling companies but has no actualy gaming commission or authority.

This simply means, by paying a fee of $5,000 annually, anyone can obtain a business license for an online Bitcoin casino. This license does not involve any kind of checks, so licensees are practically free from scrutiny and many do self-regulate because of this. Next time you’re at a Bitcoin casino with a Costa Rican licence, you’ll know that it’s highly unlikely that it’s been subject to monitoring or testing for fairness and security.

Great! So I should only play at licensed Bitcoin casinos to ensure fairplay and security?

Of course not! Licensing is no guarantee of anything. In the end, if a casino decides to cheat on you, or does not have a provably fair system for you to independently verify, or worst still decides to close your account and confiscate your funds, a licence does not offer you absolute protection.

It’s still down to you as the player to do your own due diligence before playing at any casino and find one that you are comfortable risking your money with. A greater number of licensed casinos exist out there, but many gamblers find themselves quite happy playing with a community and owners they are personally known to – which happens in many unlicensed Bitcoin casinos.